• pictures and information about the various design concepts that were explored
• the specifications of the final Montana design
• color pictures of a beautiful 1:700 scale model of Montana by Imre Somogyi
• a beautiful color painting of Montana by author and artist Wayne Scarpaci
• a picture of her never-built 1920's predecessor, BB-51 Montana
• an essay on "Why She Matters Today"; and
• a discussion of Senator Jon Tester's efforts to get the U.S. Navy to name a capital ship after his home state of Montana.

Augmented Reality A Practical Guide

By Stephen Cawood, Dr. Mark Fiala
First Edition January 2008
Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf
Pages: 328
ISBN 10: 1-934356-03-4 | ISBN 13:9781934356036

This new book from Pragmatic Bookshelf (distributed by O’Reilly) made me feel

1) scared ! what a subject for a book — is this real? and
2) deprived — I don’t have the money to buy whatever cool stuff this is about …

Kathleen Turner made her name as a screen femme fatale in the classic thriller Body Heat. Her new autobiography reveals with unflinching honesty how crippling illness and the pressures of fame tipped her into alcoholism and despair. Here, in the last of three extracts, she recalls some of the more outrageous moments from her movie career…

The extract reads pretty well. I like the way she talks.

A unique monitoring system and method is provided that involves monitoring user activity in order to facilitate managing and optimizing the utilization of various system resources. In particular, the system can monitor user activity, detect when users need assistance with their specific activities, and identify at least one other user that can assist them. Assistance can be in the form of answering questions, providing guidance to the user as the user completes the activity, or completing the activity such as in the case of taking on an assigned activity. In addition, the system can aggregate activity data across users and/or devices. As a result, problems with activity templates or activities themselves can be more readily identified, user performance can be readily compared, and users can communicate and exchange information regarding similar activity experiences. Furthermore, synchronicity and time-sensitive scheduling of activities between users can be facilitated and improved overall.

What a PITA and resource hog. It would be interesting to see whether this comes out of the Microsoft Research usability team.

George MacDonald Fraser, a British writer whose popular novels about the arch-rogue Harry Flashman followed their hero as he galloped, swashbuckled, drank and womanized his way through many of the signal events of the 19th century, died Wednesday on the Isle of Man.

This is very sad news. He’s an author whose oeuvre I’d like to own in its entirety.